Kyle Korver's recipe for thriving in basketball's ecosystem

Finding your niche in an ecosystem
Q: How do you beat Bobby Fischer?
A: Play him at anything but chess.
Charlie Munger is famous for asking and answering that question. He has (well, he claims to have) built a career on doing just such a thing. Define your circle of competence—find out what you know and what you don’t—and then only play where you have an advantage. Do that, avoid mistakes and stupidity, and you’re off to the races.
You don’t have to be brilliant to be successful. But it helps to figure out what you’re good at doing, and then confining your activity as much as possible to realms where you won’t be prone to making many errors.
I’m not going to kill myself to get mediocre
Atlanta Hawks basketball player Kyle Korver is easy to root for—girls love him, he’s a great guy, comes from a good family, he works hard to improve, and so genuinely cares for the communities he’s lived and worked in that one team’s community relations manager cried upon learning of his departure. He also embodies the ethos of Munger’s ‘play Fischer at anything but chess’ as well as just about anyone.

Kyle Korver may be beautiful, but not as beautiful as his release.

Realizing that the NBA is a pick-and-roll league, and confronted with the reality that his (relative) limitations in terms of quickness and athleticism keep him from excelling the league average for players at his position in the pick-and-roll game, Korver tried a different tack. His response is right out of Munger’s playbook: “I’m not going to kill myself to get mediocre at that. I want to find things I can be really good at in the system we run.”

Finding one’s niche in an ecosystem

Figuring out what you’re good at can be tricky. If you’re LeBron James, for example, it turns out that the universe of your possibilities on a basketball court is pretty unlimited. Whether as a result of his unprecedented physical ability, or his incredible mental acumen, LeBron is good at a lot.[i]

If you’re Kyle Korver, though, finding your niche is a little tougher. Two recent wildly interesting pieces by Zach Lowe illustrate how Korver has forged a remarkably successful career in the incredibly tough ecosystem of professional basketball, despite being overlooked and underutilized at several stops.[ii]

Now, as a result of his ability to find his niche, Korver has been invited to play for the U.S. Senior national team and is a good bet to make the final roster.

Kyle Korver and the U.S. Men's National Basketball Team

 

Bigger isn’t always better

Sometimes, famous businessman Charlie Munger argues, it’s just the reverse. Machiavelli famously was the first to postulate that, in statecraft, sometimes being the wily, agile (and smaller) fox was better than being the bigger, stronger lion.

While I doubt anyone—well, anyone who is interested in fielding a competitive NBA basketball team and not in getting a date with an Ashton Kucher look-alike heartthrob—would select Korver before LeBron, Korver has come to resemble Machiavelli’s fox in many respects. Munger provides some insight into what makes this kind of transformation possible.

Munger tells the following story in the context of the advantages and disadvantages of scale.  Several years ago when Berkshire Hathaway was the largest shareholder in Capital Cities/ABC. ABC  “had trade publications there that got murdered—where our competitors beat us. And the way they beat us was by going to a narrower specialization.”

The story is familiar to everyone who knows Munger’s work well. It comes from one of his most famous speeches, On Worldly Wisdom. His arguments are interesting.

“We’d have a travel magazine for business travel. So somebody would create one, which was addressed solely at corporate

travel departments. Like an ecosystem, you are getting a narrower and narrower specialization.

“Well, they got much more efficient. They could tell more to the guys who ran corporate travel departments. Plus, they didn’t

have to waste the ink and paper mailing out stuff that corporate travel departments were not interested in reading. It was a more

efficient system. And they beat our brains out as we relied on our broader magazine.

“That is what happened to the Saturday Evening Post and all those things. They’re gone. What we have now is Motor Cross—

which is read by a bunch of nuts who like to participate in tournaments where they turn somersaults on their motorcycles. But they

CARE about it. For them, it is the principle purpose of life. A magazine called Motor cross is a total necessity to those people. And

its profit margins would make you salivate.

“Just think of how narrowcast that kind of publishing is. So occasionally, scaling down and intensifying gives you the big advantage.”

Basketball’s Evolving Ecosystem

Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry is among the forefront of writers and thinkers who characterize the NBA as an ecosystem in the way Munger has in mind. Whether you’re inclined to agree with his assessment of what that means for players like Monta Ellis, or are persuaded by counterarguments by smart people like blogger Jeff Fogle, thinking of basketball as an ecosystem can yield the kinds of insights that Munger has gleaned by applying the ecosystem mental model to stock-picking.
Take Korver, for example. The stuff the Atlanta Hawks let Korver do is far different than what he was allowed to do when he entered the league as a rookie for Philadelphia. Despite Korver’s reputation as one of college’s premier marksmen, Randy Ayers, the 76’ers head coach at the time, preferred Korver to ply a midrange game and get to the basket before shooting from long range.
Lowe describes the change what Korver’s team expected of him when the 76’ers fired Ayers and replaced him with Jim O’Brien:

“In the team’s very first practice, Allen Iverson ran a two-on-one fast break with Korver filling the wing. Iverson dished to Korver behind the 3-point arc. Korver took two dribbles, nailed a 17-footer, and waited for the applause.

O’Brien was livid. He screamed for Korver to look down at the 3-point line. O’Brien told him that if Korver ever passed up another open 3-pointer, he would remove him from the game. Korver remembers one thought flying through his head during O’Brien’s tirade: This is awesome.”

Stats LLC, the company that makes the increasingly ubiquitous SportVU cameras, developed a couple new measures of how much attention NBA defenders pay an offensive player when he doesn’t have the ball.
Korver, not surprisingly, does very well in both. On the ‘gravity score,’ which measures how often defenders continue to guard a player when one of his teammates has the ball, Korver was forth in the league. He ranked behind only Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and Paul George. Durant and Anthony are two of the best scorers of their generation, and George is becoming a great scorer who is really the only guy on his team capable of creating his own shot. That Korver tops the entire league except these three is amazing.
On the ‘distraction score,’ which measures how often a player’s defender leaves him to pay attention to another player (presumably usually one with the ball), Korver registered the lowest score in the league. No player in the league was able to keep the guy guarding him from helping his teammates than Korver. Well, at least no player was able to do so while he didn’t have the ball.
These numbers surprised even Korver’s coach, who Zach Lowe cites as saying, “I underestimated how much attention he gets from defenses. You don’t appreciate it until you see it every day.” Lowe rightly surmises that, “Korver is almost an offense unto himself.”
Adapt or Die & the Lollapalooza Effect
It’s obviously hard for each of us to figure out what we’re good at and how to cultivate our skills and abilities so that we can take advantage of the ecosystem we find ourselves in (or to find a different ecosystem entirely!).
Korver as a case study is probably most instructive, to us who aren’t blessed with a great jump shot and the physical ability and stature to get shots off against some of the world’s greatest athletes, in terms of his attitude.
Interestingly, Korver’s success wasn’t just a result of the way he was used; it was more than the basketball ecosystem that had evolved around him. Reading Lowe’s pieces makes clear that his coaches in Atlanta, head coach Mike Budenholzer and advisor Quin Snyder (who has since become head coach of the Utah Jazz) were open to developing new ways to use his talents. Equally important, though, is Korver’s ability and willingness to adapt himself.
““Kyle’s unique in the sense that players his age who have had success aren’t usually open to trying new things,” says Snyder. “It makes them uncomfortable.”
Sloan amplified the sentiment, saying, “Most guys just stay the same after they’ve been in the league 10 years.”
He’s always had that willingness to learn.

Consider another Lowe piece, on the advice shooting guru, erstwhile Jazz assistant coach and current Suns head coach Jeff Hornacek gave Korver. Lowe writes:

“Hornacek eventually shared one of his shooting secrets with Korver: As Hornacek wound up to shoot, he zeroed in on a tiny speck of the rim, and then aimed to shoot the ball just over that speck. The location of the speck changed with every shot, depending on where Hornacek was on the floor.

This struck Korver as insane, and maybe impossible. Lots of players target a general area of the rim. Some guys home in on the front of the rim and try to launch the ball just over it. Others direct their gaze at the back of the rim and aim just short of it.

But to find a tiny fleck of orange — to actually find one, every time — seemed implausible. ‘I was like, ‘My eyes are not that good, dude. I need to get my eyes checked.’

That sounds like an expression, but Korver actually went and got his eyes checked. ‘I’m serious, man,’ he says now. ‘I actually went to a doctor.’

His vision is fine.”

So is his attitude. And his combination of work ethic, desire to improve, and willingness to change, along with changes in the game he plays and in the coaches he has have contributed to a lollapalooza effect that have Korver thriving in his niche in a tough ecosystem.

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[i] Even LeBron, though, has had to evolve.

[ii] Lowe notes that, despite going 38-12 after getting Korver in exchange for Gordan Giricek and a draft pick, the Utah Jazz let him go after drafting Gordon Hayward. Lowe cites former Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan as saying, “We loved him, but when we drafted Hayward, that cut down on his value here.” Coaches matter. Coach and analyst David Thorpe is fond of saying the first order of business in running a team would be to hire smartest guy you can find, send him on a one-year scouting expedition to find the best coach in the world then hire him. He’ll make all your personnel moves love smarter.

Sloan is a great coach. One of the best ever. His offense’s efficiency ratings are incredible. When you consider the personnel he had to work with, it’s even more remarkable.

But many wonder if the Jazz’s failure—and Sloan’s old school reluctance—to embrace the kinds of efficient scoring opportunities that the Spurs or the Houston Rockets have cultivated offenses have held the Jazz organization back. I’m not so sure. I do think, though, that swapping Hayward for Korver is an example of, if not failing to learn Machiavelli’s lion and the fox lesson, at least presents a significant downside from an efficiency standpoint. Hayward is certainly the more impressive physical specimen. He can certainly do more things than Korver. Hayward is more athletic; he’s younger, and, for a time at least, worked on a cheaper contract. But he certainly doesn’t have that singular talent that nearly perfectly fills a very important niche in the ecosystem of contemporary basketball.

Consider: last year, Korver made 47.2 percent of his 3s. He shot 58 percent on ‘stationary 3s,’ which means that when he shots after catching a pass when his feet are more or less set behind the three-point line, each of his shots produce about 1.75 points. That means a Korver stationary three-pointer is worth more than just about any shot that isn’t a dunk. Hayward experienced some growing pains last year, shooting just better than 30 percent on three-pointers. Hayward, as Utah’s lead offensive option, only managed to get off 3.6 three-pointers per game, meaning that Korver’s made almost as many as Hayward took. And the latter’s 2.6 makes per game dwarf the former’s 1.1. 

Of course, Dennis Lindsay, Kevin O’Connor and the rest of the team’s decision makers’ (tough to pin this one on Sloan, who is so competitive, I can’t imagine him signing off on anything even remotely resembling a tanking effort) realization that Korver would have kept them too competitive to bottom out, secure perhaps the most valuable commodity for a small market team—especially one located in Utah—a high lottery draft pick probably had as much to do with letting Korver go as any misevaluation of his talent. I’ll bet the Jazz knew what they had in Korver (hiring free-thinking  Quin Snyder instead of returning to Sloan who has recently expressed quite a bit of interest in returning to the bench indicates they’d likely embrace the kind of defense-bending three-point shooting that Korver provides), but wanted instead to lose games and unload players that might take Hayward’s playing time. 

Reading Rainbow Kickstarter? What about Charlie Munger's mental models!

Reading Rainbow and reading choice

I recently wrote about a U.K program that increased girls’ levels of physical activity when they had a say in the content of those classes. Education researcher Stephen Krashen has demonstrated the same phenomenon also happens with reading. 

A recent piece on Reading Rainbow and its limits in the New Yorker reports that Krashen’s findings have “shown that when kids choose what they get to read and when, their vocabulary and language skills tend to improve, as does their overall knowledge and ability to think for themselves.” 

Reading Rainbow's Kickstarter campaign ad.

The piece cites the new Reading Rainbow app as likely to foster that kind of positive result in children who use it.  And, interestingly, argues somewhat counterintuitively (it would, I think, certainly be counterintuitive to Charlie Munger, at least) that the app promotes an  “entirely onscreen reading experience” might not be so bad, either. The piece cites another recent U.K. survey that found that kids were more likely to enjoy reading “if, instead of using only books, they used both books and touch screens.”

Whatever the actual merits of the app and onscreen reading generally, I agree with the Adrienne Raphel’s conclusion that “there’s something nice about an app that, instead of rating and ranking kids, mostly just lets them read.”

Reading Rainbow’s smashingly successful Kickstarter campaign

The Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign recently launched was a huge success. Aiming to to “Bring Reading Rainbow Back for Every Child, Everywhere,” those behind the effort set out with the goal to raise a million dollars in thirty-five days. They reached that mark in fewer than twelve hours. Emboldened, they revised the mark to five million dollars. More than one hundred thousand people bought into the campaign—including, famously, Seth MacFarlane whose matching million dollars pushed the total donations to more than six million—allowing the organizers’ lofty goal to be reached and then some. 

Munger Mental Models Kickstarter?

Like many, I have fond memories of the program. I’m happy for what the New Yorker piece calls the “Upworthy-worthy goal of putting books in every child’s hands nationwide,” even if it did take a “smorgasbord of rewards for contributors” to grease the wheels of donation.

Inspired by the success of revivifying something that was such a small but obviously emotionally powerful part of our childhoods, I wonder what a Kickstarter campaign for Munger’s Mental Models might look like.

I know there’s interest. My post on Think Mental Models is by far the most popular piece on this blog. And it points to a pay site that, presumably, does a pretty brisk business. But, as I argued in that piece, there’s a lot that a canned program can’t really teach. And, as helpful as pneumonic devices like those espoused by Andrew are, they only work once a lot of other stuff has happened. More than just learning the array of models that Think Mental Models offers, even more than taking the additional step of learning when to apply which models a la Mason Meyers via Clayton Christensen, there’s something else required to successfully use Munger’s latticework approach in practice.

Michael Oakeshott uses the wonderful example of the Confucian story of a wheelwright and the Duke Huan of Chi to illustrate the difference between what he calls ‘technical’ and ‘practical’ knowledge.[i] Technical knowledge is the stuff that can be memorized and written down as rules; practical knowledge is the stuff that can’t be learned or taught this way.

Munger has already said that learning this stuff is pretty difficult even before the idea of having to conquer both the technical and practical aspects of our knowledge. Hard enough, in fact, that he thinks it a good idea only to try in elite educational institutions (an idea I strongly disagree with, by the way). One person who has thought a lot about Mungers ideas and how to put them to their fullest use is similarly pessimistic that they could be learned or taught widely.[ii]

Has Protagoras robbed you? How about Charlie Munger?

In his ‘Dialogues’, Plato recorded this exchange: Socrates, “What is the matter? Has Protagoras robbed you of anything?” His interlocutor replied, laughing, “Yes he has, Socrates, of the wisdom which he keeps to himself.”

This blog was founded because Munger and Greg Glassman shared much with us. Munger has been great at sharing what he knows and is remarkably generous with his time and energy. But I think he—and his heirs, and I mean his intellectual heirs, not those who will receive the monetary fortune he’s accrued and is currently giving away—could give us so much more if he tried. If he believed that, while success leaves clues, that teaching could provide so much more.

So, should we despair over ever learning or teaching Munger’s mental models widely? I don’t think so. I think there are a few people who have a firm grasp of Munger’s approach—who have an understanding of both the technical and practical aspects of how to put such a latticework approach to use—and who might teach it to others.

An historical counterexample

Munger is famous for his anecdote of the man from Arkansas (or wherever) believing in baptism because he’s seen it done. Well, I believe Munger’s ideas can be taught, because I’ve seen a very similar thing get taught.

Though clearly less advanced, less far-ranging, and less multi-disciplinary, Benjamin Graham taught Warren Buffett what he knew. Many, including Munger, have opined that what Buffett took from Graham was of immense utility. Munger, not surprisingly—armed with his black belt in chutzpah—is a more ambitious thinker than Graham.

But that ambition means not only more difficulty in conveying what he has learned, but more possibility in teaching it. Yes, what Munger is up to is a lot more difficult than the more technique-based ‘Geiger counter’ method espoused by Graham. At the same time, though, Munger has, in my view, the same chances of teaching what he knows as Graham did what he knew. Pending students capable of grasping the material, of course.

A lesson from Étienne and the education of Blaise Pascal

Euclid's "Elements"

Yes, Munger is 90 years old.[iii] Yes, he may not have the interest in personally teaching the course. And even a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign is likely to move the needle for a guy who has more money than he could ever use.

And, yes, I can think of an even bigger obstacle to success—Munger doesn’t think that such a class would work and is ideologically opposed to the attempt, on the grounds that getting people to find this stuff out for themselves rather than either pounding it into or spoonfeeding them is a better way.[iv]

I’ve got another historical example of a great—and presumably stubborn—teacher who changed his mind at the demonstration of something remarkable (though admittedly, a lot more remarkable than any campaign in the history of Kickstarter). Étienne Pascal, Blaise’s dad—wasn’t too keen on the education on offer for his children. So, he took to providing for their education himself.

He thought the best approach was to leave mathematics until later in his children’s study, so they started on a program devoid of instruction in the subject. At least one commentator has observed that this had the effect of only whetting his children’s appetites for the study of the discipline.[v]

Euclid's Proposition 32

Étienne continued on this course until one day he happened on Blaise who was in his room drawing on the floor. Blaise had independently worked out and illustrated the basis for Euclid’s 32^nd proposition right on his bedroom floor. Having been denied mathematics instruction by his father, Blaise, on his own, discovered that the interior angles of a triangle add up to the sum of two right angles. 

Of course, Étienne relented, gave his son a copy of Euclid's Elements and immediately began teaching his children mathematics.

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[i] Duke Huan of Ch’i was reading a book at the upper end of the hall; the wheelwright was making a wheel at the lower end. Put­ting aside his mallet and chisel, he called to the Duke and asked him what book he was reading. “One that records the words of the Sages,” answered the Duke. “Are those Sages alive?” asked the wheelwright. “Oh, no,” said the Duke, “they are dead.” “In that case,” said the wheelwright, “what you are reading can be noth­ing but the lees and scum of bygone men.” “How dare you, a wheelwright, find fault with the book I am reading. If you can explain your statement, I will let it pass. If not, you shall die.” “Speaking as a wheelwright,” he replied, “I look at the matter in this way; when I am making a wheel, if my stroke is too slow, then it bites deep but is not steady; if my stroke is too fast, then it is steady, but it does not go deep. The right pace, neither slow nor fast, cannot get into the hand unless it comes from the heart. It is a thing that cannot be put into words [rules]; there is an art in it that I cannot explain to my son. That is why it is impossible for me to let him take over my work, and here I am at the age of seventy, still making wheels. In my opinion it must have been the same with the men of old. All that was worth handing on, died with them; the rest, they put into their books. That is why I said that what you were reading was the lees and scum of by­gone men.”

[ii] He offered the New York Times Crossword puzzle as a good metaphor for the real multi-domain, holistic fluency mastering Munger's Mental Models requires. "Those [who] can complete it must have massive knowledge across multiple domains: the English language, literature, pop culture, etc. Bring anything less than that broad domain base of understanding, and it can’t be done." He thought this a good metaphor because it's easily recognized as a yes or no proposition: one either has sufficient knowledge or one doesn't. "If you don’t," he added, "no dice."  

[iii] At the most recent Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting, Warren Buffett referred to the nonagenarian as his “canary in the coalmine”.  “Most 90-year old men are gone soon enough,” Munger shot back. Buffett looked amused, as the veracity of that statement sank into the crowd and said, "The canary has spoken."

[iv] I disagree with Munger on both of these points. To provide my argument as to why in brief, because there’s still a tremendous amount of work that people would need to undertake to learn even with him—or someone like him—explicitly providing instruction in the mental models and how to use them. I also think it’s possible to learn and teach because Munger did it—and lamented the fragmentary, haphazard approach he had to use to obtain the understanding he has achieved. Why would people be worse off in their pursuit of worldly wisdom if they had someone tell them what was possible and why (Yes, Charlie, WHY!) at the outset of their study?

[v] Admittedly, a pretty strong counterexample to my overall argument that Munger or a Munger protégé should teach the mental model approach! Perhaps Munger, by withholding his understanding is doing more to successfully get people engaged than he would even if he were to write a book and teach classes from now until his dying day.